One class party, a thought experiment.

[Usual Suspect]

Sissyl wrote:

All wizard parties have a pretty good reason to focus on fireballs and the like. Sure, it's not the most effective form of attack one on one, but four fireballs on round 1? Scary.

All commoners, now there is a challenge for you.

We'd have to come up with commoner archetypes. Lets see;

Farmer
Dock Worker
Barmaid
Goat Herder
Street Cleaner
Chimney Sweep

They should be able to handle any tasks that come up.

Infestation of sewer rats? Get the street cleaner on that right away. Kudzu infestation, call the farmer and the goat herder. Rowdy adventurers trashing your town, turn loose the dock worker and the barmaid. Rampaging fire elemental, get the chimney sweep.

[Otherwhere]

I want to do an all Gunslinger party and recreate "The Magnificent Seven"!

I'd love to see my group all start with the same class and build them differently, and see how they play.

[Charon's Little Helper]

strayshift wrote:

CKorfmann wrote:

FuelDrop wrote:

All Dwarf Bard Party: Rock/Metal band. 'Cause all Dwarfs care about is Rock, Metal, and Axes.

This! :-)

Yeah verily this, however...

Four coordinated Sorcerer's CAN do EVERYTHING if they choose to. Discuss.

At high levels maybe. But they'd probably die at level 1-3.

[Silver Surfer]

An all wizard/sorceror party would need a very friendly GM.... encounters involving SR/good saves and/or sneak attacks and things would end v.quickly....

[GM_Solspiral]

All wizards can work as long as they have different specialties and fight smart, I've played it.

[boring7]

Don't forget that monoclass is *expected* to be weaker because you're unbalanced. You either don't have or are faking one or more of the three and a half (poor rogues...) pillars of a properly balanced and powerful party. Even barbarians eventually have to spend a week resting because the enemy got in some real lucky shots.

[BadBird]

Monoclass isn't really a major issue that way though if you use a class like Cleric or Oracle that, with all the options out there now, can become pretty much whatever it wants to be.

As far as all Wizards goes, Allied Spellcaster would definitely pull it's weight...

[DominusMegadeus]

Cleric/Oracle and Druid are probably the best, like everyone else said.

Wizard can be painful if you're going from 1-20, but if you start somewhere after level 5 I think it would be easy enough. Much like Rogue where the usually suicidal scouting and sneaking becomes the entire party's MO, the entire party would stop for resting when spells ran low, or be able to cycle through who casts real spells and who shoots a bow/ray of frost and complete a full adventuring day.

[TOZ]

Usual Suspect wrote:

Chimney Sweep

Dibs!

[boring7]

BadBird wrote:

Monoclass isn't really a major issue that way though if you use a class like Cleric or Oracle that, with all the options out there now, can become pretty much whatever it wants to be.

As far as all Wizards goes, Allied Spellcaster would definitely pull it's weight...

Oh yeah, some definitely "fake it" (whatever "it" is) easier than others, but EVERYBODY misses something they'd rather have (Best cleric magic in the game still has trouble with sneaking) at some point. Something to remember when you point out that climbing the ladder from 1-20 as a wiz-kid gang will be brutal. Everybody will face problems.

[Avoron]

Maybe the "best cleric magic in the game" has trouble with sneaking, but the powers that a cleric can use several times per day at level 1 from the Night and Ambush subdomains as well as the Darkness or Trickery variant channeling seem to have no problem with sneaking at all. Oh, and don't forget the kobold alternate favored class bonus.

Sure, some classes cannot do things that others can. But there are more than four classes, so you can't get everything in a single party no matter what you do. The roles that a certain class can fill are becoming more varied with every new publication, and saying that a combination of archetypes is intrinsically limited in a way that a combination of classes isn't just doesn't acknowledge the unconventional uses of classes that were deliberately built into the rules.

[FrodoOf9Fingers]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Magus yet.

Consider the following:
Kensai Magus: Bodyguard/tank style Int then Dex
Hexcrafter: Pure Debuffage Dex then int (or?)
Samsaran Vanilla: Mostly spell caster, grabs CLW, early haste, and other such support spells. Int then strength
Kensai Magus: Pure Damage Int then Dex

[DominusMegadeus]

FrodoOf9Fingers wrote:

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Magus yet.

Consider the following:
Kensai Magus: Bodyguard/tank style Int then Dex
Hexcrafter: Pure Debuffage Dex then int (or?)
Samsaran Vanilla: Mostly spell caster, grabs CLW, early haste, and other such support spells. Int then strength
Kensai Magus: Pure Damage Int then Dex

Team Supernova

[FrodoOf9Fingers]

More like team BreakActionEconomy

But here's an idea of basing assumptions. Can your team fill all of the party roles?

Party Scout
Party Face
Skill Monkey (or have 90% of skills covered?)
Meat Tank/Evasion Tank
Damage Dealer
Debuffer/Battlefield Controller
Healer/Party Supporter

[Atarlost]

Definitely cleric or oracle. Clerics have the evangelist archetype, which is a huge deal, and better saves. Oracles have better skills and spell variety.

Shamans and witches aren't in the running because shamans don't have the melee cleric buffs and witches have poor BAB. Sorry.

No one else has restoration and all the removes on schedule. Samsarans can make team druid viable as well since only a few spells are needed and one back line druid can afford a con penalty. This doesn't help the shaman because they need off-list spells for the front line role where a con penalty is a real problem.

Honorable mention go to the inquisitor, alchemist, and investigator, who I think have all the required spells, but don't have them in a timely manner. So does the warpriest, but they're strictly inferior to clerics in this context.

[Renegadeshepherd]

FrodoOf9Fingers wrote:

More like team BreakActionEconomy

But here's an idea of basing assumptions. Can your team fill all of the party roles?

Party Scout
Party Face
Skill Monkey (or have 90% of skills covered?)
Meat Tank/Evasion Tank
Damage Dealer
Debuffer/Battlefield Controller
Healer/Party Supporter

Yes cleric can do all that and more. Literally the only thing the cleric cannot do as well as any class you care to name for comparison in the criteria you mentioned is skill monkey. While regrettable, it is well documented that depending on a group play style or how many spells you burn to solve a skill challenge, skill monkey is the least needed role in a considerable number of groups. Even PFS has tried to mend this some but ultimately its not too hard to get by with a lesser amount of skills when compared to having no combat abilities.

[RumpinRufus]

"Required" spells like Restoration, etc. can all be done through scrolls.

[Captain K.]

4 Mediums.

They *can* do anything but nobody has a clue what other party members can do on any given day.

Plus there is a good chance the whole gang goes crazy and NPC themselves within the week

[Rathendar]

All one class. Team Druid. they can even build for different wild shape utility.

Tyrannosaurus!
Triceratops!
Mastodon!
Pterodactyl!
Sabertoothed Tiger!

...I'm sorry everyone. It just slipped out.

[DominusMegadeus]

Rathendar wrote:

Tyrannosaurus!

Triceratops!
Mastodon!
Pterodactyl!
Sabertoothed Tiger!

*Jammin' guitar riff*

[Captain K.]

4 Kineticists*

Kwame the Geokineticist

Gi the Hydrokineticist

Wheeler the Pyrokineticist

Linka the Aerokineticist

Nobody cares about the NPC class Heartkineticist

LET OUR POWERS COMBINE

*note - they would be hopeless as a party though. Their only real skills are blowing stuff to smithereens and sleeping a full 8 hours every night, no exceptions

[Rathendar]

DominusMegadeus wrote:

Rathendar wrote:

Tyrannosaurus!

Triceratops!
Mastodon!
Pterodactyl!
Sabertoothed Tiger!

*Jammin' guitar riff*

Thank you my good man!...er...corpse....living challenged gentleman...

[DominusMegadeus]

Rathendar wrote:

DominusMegadeus wrote:

Rathendar wrote:

Tyrannosaurus!

Triceratops!
Mastodon!
Pterodactyl!
Sabertoothed Tiger!

*Jammin' guitar riff*

Thank you my good man!...er...corpse....living challenged gentleman...

We prefer Necro-capable, however we also accept brains.

[Avoron]

In an all cleric party, the Luck domain can be very useful for skills. Failure is less of a risk when you only have a 9% chance of rolling less than a 7.

[UnArcaneElection]

Atarlost wrote:

{. . .}

Shamans and witches aren't in the running because shamans don't have the melee cleric buffs and witches have poor BAB. Sorry.

No one else has restoration and all the removes on schedule. {. . .}

Shamans and Witches have these, and depending upon Patron, Witches can get nice buffs too. I THINK this is also true for Shamans depending upon what Spirits they take, but I haven't had time to check them carefully (have avoided studying ACG stuff too hard because it seems like it is still in Third Playtest, if you know what I mean . . .). And Witches (especially) and Shamans can do some crazy debuffing, particularly if some of them are Halflings focusing on Jinxing. Poor BAB getting you down? Nerf enemies' Saves, Attack Rolls, and AC with Evil Eye and Summon stuff that has good BAB. Like I said several posts ago, the big weakness is Anti-Magic Field (which is OP, but that's probably best saved for a different thread), and if you let some of them take enough levels in the Blackfire Adept/Darkfire Adept Prestige Class, they even have a chance to get through that.

[Gisher]

FuelDrop wrote:

Of course, the true strength of an all bard party is that you get to go around introducing yourself as a band.

All Dwarf Bard Party: Rock/Metal band. 'Cause all Dwarfs care about is Rock, Metal, and Axes.

All Elf Bard Party: Boy Band. Complete with lip synching to ghost sound.

Anyone got any other good speciesist jokes for the bands?

I'd suggest sylphs, but they mostly just play air guitar.